Cellphone Technology

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com Knowledge is not power in any proximate sense; it would be truer to say that "imagery is power." The entire political situation in Pakistan was recently changed, thanks to a home video of a very young woman being held down and ritually beaten by bearded Taliban, in Swat, for the crime of being in the company of a man not her male guardian. The screams of that girl somehow galvanized a significant part of Pakistani opinion to demand that their government stop retreating. Likewise, the murder of Neda Agha-Soltan in Tehran -- picked off in the street by a plainclothed gunman of the regime's unspeakable Basiji, and shown to the world by video -- has galvanized the ayatollahs' opponents, everywhere. Imagery can of course be false; can be staged. But it is unlikely that either of the scenes I mention above were staged; and they communicate the truth of the situation far more eloquently than yet another speech by the American charlatan. And for that: thank you, cellphone technology.